


The White Light of Forever

by Cinderstrato



Series: Into the West [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Gratuitous misuse of Tolkien mythology, M/M, Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, except not really because basically everybody's dead already so it doesn't count
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:25:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4561044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderstrato/pseuds/Cinderstrato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tauriel of the Greenwood fears no Vala.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The White Light of Forever

**Author's Note:**

> All rights belong to Professor Tolkien's estate.

* * *

THE WHITE LIGHT OF FOREVER

* * *

* * *

 

WHEN THE MEN BID their cart halt, Tauriel is not afraid. Her mother sits beside her, strong and clever, with her trustiest blade at her belt; Tauriel has her own little dagger too, a gift for her thirtieth birthday, and enough lessons to use it well.

It is not the first time their cart has been beset by thieves. The last two winters have been fell, and many of the Men of Esgaroth are hungry, ranging beyond the boundaries of their land in search of game and labour for coin in the Greenwood. The elves’ wagon-loads of Dorwinion wine prove too great a temptation for those who think to steal a few bottles to sell in Dale. But always they are chased away with empty hands -- they are desperate Men, her mother says, not experienced brigands, and they always flee at the first sign of a fight.

Her breath catches as the Men circle their cart with their ponies, shouting in their harsh, guttural tongue, but she grasps the handle of her dagger and waits for her mother to frighten them away.

This day they do not flee. Her mother stands tall and draws her sword in warning, and Tauriel watches the arrow sink into her throat.

Her mother makes no sound as she falls from the cart onto the road, but the Men startle and scatter in a panicked fury of curses and braying horses. For a moment Tauriel sits, blinking at the empty air where her mother stood. She scrambles to her feet and leaps over the cart, calling out in horror, but she loses her footing in her haste. Her ankle twists with a fiery pain.

On the dusty road her mother lies still, eyes unseeing and her breast bathed in blood. Tauriel kneels beside her and cannot think of anything to do but scream.

She will be told later that her cries could be heard down to the riverbank, and they draw to her the Elvenking’s caravan, returning from a council in Dale. The swift pounding of hooves startles her into silence, and fear has her grasping for an abandoned bow, a hateful arrow still notched on its string.

There is no breath in the body beside her -- she knows it, though she has never seen death before. But she raises the bow in defense of her mother, her only thought that they must not touch her.

There are dozens of them, elves in shining helms and body-armour with lances and bows. She points her arrow at the closest elf, his unbound hair trailing silver-gold over his shoulders. The other elves raise their weapons, and her palms grow slick with sweat.

“Peace,” the elf says with a soft laugh, and he makes no move for the shield at his side. “You are in the company of Thranduil Oropherion. No harm will come to you.”

She has trained an arrow on the Elvenking. She lets the bow fall to the road, her hands trembling, and the guards lower their spears. “My mother,” she says, and her throat closes.

The kingsguard at his side makes a harsh noise. “Men, my lord. Look at the arrow.”

The king’s eyes dart from the arrow to the bottles of wine to the sword lying on the dirt by her mother’s open hand, and then he looks at Tauriel. “I am sorry, child. What is your name?”

She cannot speak.

“If you will come into the city, we will tend to your wounds and see what may be done about finding your kin,” the king tells her softly. “It is not safe for you to linger here alone. Will you come?”

Tauriel knows that there are no kin to claim her -- if ever there were, her mother never said. She hesitates, but the other guards are bearing her mother’s body onto the cart, and she is seized by a sudden terror.

“Will you come?” the king asks again. His smile is kind, but there is no answering warmth in his eyes. “Do not be afraid of me, child. Aratha, give her a seat on your mount.”

But Tauriel’s leg is too badly wounded to endure the jarring ride. After a moment of low-voiced argument, silenced by a gesture from the king, the kingsguard takes her elbow and lifts her gently into the cart instead. Through her tears, she stares at her mother’s face, hidden beneath the drape of the king’s silver cloak.

 _If this is love, I do not want it_.

Numb, with a stranger’s hand upon her shoulder, Tauriel, daughter of the Silvan elf Taulién, is borne away to the Woodland Realm.

 

***

 

Tauriel wanders.

She follows the path as best she can, staying close to the river’s banks, but this time there is no soft-voiced halfling at her side, no obfuscating wizard to lead the way. She has only her bow and her pack and a parting blessing from the Lady Galadriel.

Though she walks over land that is ever-changing and never changed, the Halls of Aulë are hidden from her sight. She had been forewarned that it would not be an easy journey, but she is not afraid. She will find him. She promised that she would.

Valmar lies far behind her now, and she shall not return.

 

***

 

It is said that the Eldar, first and most beloved of Eru Ilúvatar’s children, were once formed from the strains of the Ainulindalë, born of air and earth and water. They are guardians as enduring as the forests of old, blessed with bodies that do not fade with the passage of time. It is said that the souls of the Eldar nourish all of Arda and keep wickedness from the shores of Middle-earth.

It is said too that Lord Aulë carved the dwarves from rock against Eru’s perfect design. Therefore they would always be half-formed, crudely shaped by the hands of an inexpert craftsman. Dwarves are of the stone they so love. They are ungainly and unyielding and sharp-edged. Every elf knows that the dwarves’ spirits stagnate in the cool, dark depths of rock, and they can see nothing but what glitters before them.

And yet Kíli is not cold, nor hardened, nor roughly-hewn. There is a sweetness in Kíli’s face and in his voice, in the tender brush of his hand. He is young and full of life and joy, and her tired spirit lifts to hear his carefree laugh. He is the outside world, the wide blue-black sweep of the night sky, the unknown land beyond the darkening confines of the forest.

The rune-rock is smooth and holds the heat of her hands, a warm weight in her tunic. Perhaps they are all of them wrong to think that stone must be cold.

 

***

 

“I hear tell that you are leaving us as well,” Lord Elrond says.

She lowers the last bundle onto the bed in Frodo’s new chamber and considers how best to reply. The cottage by the Sea is empty now, and she is strangely sorry to see it -- it holds within its comfortable walls many happy memories of friendship. Still, Frodo cannot stay there alone, not while it reflects shades of his departed uncle. It is for the best that he stay here in the city, under the protection of an honoured elf-lord’s influence.

“It is true, my lord,” she says at length, turning to offer him a respectful bow. “I intend to depart in two days’ time, once Master Frodo is settled.”

“I am sorry to hear it. He shall miss you.”

She steels herself against a sharp tug of sorrow. She will dearly miss her gentle friend, who showed her charity and understanding even when she repaid him with coolness. She dislikes having to go so soon after Master Bilbo and the dwarf-king left him, but Frodo knows that she must go. “I shall miss him as well, but I trust that he will be well-looked after here.”

“He will.” He observes her for a moment with dark, assessing eyes that tempt her to shuffle her feet like an elfling. “If you require anything for your journey, you need only ask, and it will be given.”

Tauriel thinks that he is grateful to have her go. She feels no offense, for she has seen the quick dart of pain in his eyes whenever a young elf-maid passes him on the street, or when high laughter flutes on the wind. The queen of Gondor is said to be the very image of Lúthien, dark of hair and light of eye, but Tauriel supposes that grief can make a beloved face out of a stranger. “My thanks, Lord Elrond.”

“I wish you well, Tauriel of the Greenwood,” Lord Elrond says in his measured tones. “May you find what you are looking for.”

Tauriel inclines her head. “Farewell, Lord of Imladris.” She hesitates for a moment, wary of being too bold, but she will speak -- if only for the sake of an elf-lord’s daughter, whom she will never meet, but who knows too what it is to make sacrifices for love. “May you make peace with what you will not find.”

For an instant, his composure falters, but he bows graciously over her hand and takes his leave.

 

***

 

The Woodland Realm is vast and strange, and Tauriel despairs.

She is given a home with Aratha the kingsguard while they seek out her kin. They bury her mother’s body with many honours and send out a party of soldiers to track the Men responsible for bloodshed in the Greenwood. The king lays his hand upon her head as her mother turns to ash on the pyre and murmurs solemn words of condolence. She will not speak with him again for many years.

Aratha is skilled with the bow but not with the raising of elflings; she clearly does not know what to do with Tauriel, who for many months can scarcely bring herself to rise from her bed in the mornings. But Aratha lives alone -- she has no lover and few friends beyond the soldiers she commands, and it becomes apparent that she is lonely. She grows very fond of Tauriel and showers her with little favours and kindnesses, and when scouts return from the forest with word that no relatives can be found, Aratha tries and fails to conceal how the news pleases her.

But Tauriel cannot love Aratha. She misses her mother. She misses life on the road, travelling in the shelter of the forest, going from here to there and never staying long in either place. Here in the kingdom she feels trapped, enfolded in the airy caverns below the ground, a sapling withering without the sun.

Where else can she go? She is not yet of age. She would be defenseless in the forest with no one to protect her. She would be kinless, with no one to walk at her side.

One morning she forces herself to rise, pushing away the dark lethargy that seems to always drag at her heels now. She goes to Aratha in the training yard and asks to learn swordcraft and archery. Aratha is delighted by the show of interest, giving her a hopeful, affectionate press as she is drawn into the ring.

Tauriel takes up the sword that is offered to her and imagines the forest paths, the open fields stretching up toward the sky.

 

***

 

Their kin in Lothlórien, it is said, have ascended toward the realm of the Ainur -- beyond enchantment, beyond petty quarrels, beyond grief itself -- and in her heart Tauriel envies them.

In her sacred gardens, the Lady Galadriel is a vision in flowing white silk, her fabled hair as bright as moonbeams. She looks up from her fountain as Tauriel approaches, and her eyes are a piercing, clearwater blue. Tauriel kneels before her, feeling ragged and small, her clothes grey with dust and rumpled from the long journey.

“Tauriel, daughter of Taulién, be welcome.” Lady Galadriel’s voice is low and ponderous, and Tauriel feels something awed and anxious and half-afraid tighten in her throat. Here before her is the Lady of Lórien, an elf of great power as old and knowing as the Ages, and for the first time, she begins to doubt her purpose in coming here.

“My thanks,” she says stiffly.

The Lady nods and takes up a white cloth next to the fountain, draping it gently over the silver bowl.

“I hope I have not disturbed you, my lady,” Tauriel says belatedly. Pleasantries come slowly to her now -- the only creatures she comes close enough to greet these days are swiftly met with her arrows.

“It is nothing that cannot wait.” She smiles, and there is a lovely softness to the curve of her cheek. “How fares the Greenwood?”

An old pain blossoms in her breast, and fiercely she shoves it down. “I would not know, my lady.” She shores her courage and lifts her chin. “I have heard that the elves of Lothlórien are departing for the West. I wish to sail as well, if you would allow me a place on your ships.”

“You are young yet.”

Tauriel supposes it is true. Six hundred years is nothing to Galadriel of Lothlórien. But she feels ancient, worn down in pursuit of one battle after another. She is empty, her days filled with nothing but lonely travel and the hollow triumph of orcish blood on her sword.

“Come to me,” Lady Galadriel says, and Tauriel rises warily and comes. Up close, the Lady’s beauty is overwhelming. She smells of sweet lavender, and a single pearl gleams in the hollow of her throat. Her face is kind, but Tauriel’s instincts growl of danger.

The Lady does not touch her nor draw closer. She studies Tauriel’s face, giving no hint as to her opinion of what she finds there. “Your spirit is weary.”

Tauriel bows her head to hide the burn of tears. Beneath her armour, her countless scars ache, poorly-mended bones throbbing and grinding. She is tired. “I have been fighting long, my lady.”

“In a war of your own making.”

She closes her eyes and tries not to weep.

Fingers alight on her cheek, and she opens her eyes. “Peace, daughter,” Lady Galadriel says, and the touch of her hand is soft and cool. “You shall have a place on our ships.”

 

***

 

“Tauriel! Wait for me!”

Tauriel cannot quite hide her amusement as the prince bounds through the gates, a harried guard trailing after him. Poor Ulías. He ought to have known Lord Thranduil would punish him for allowing a party of Men to go through the Greenwood unquestioned.

“Prince Legolas, your father . . . “ the guardsman wheezes.

Legolas waves his hand at his keeper, impatient. “He’ll be at banquet all night, he always is. I have my broadsword, and we’ll only go as far as the bend in the river. Go back and finish your dinner.” Assured of being obeyed, he strides across the bridge, past Tauriel, and lingers restlessly by the head of the road.

Ulías looks to Tauriel when the prince’s back is turned, questioning.

Tauriel gives him a firm nod, her hand going to the handle of the dagger at her belt and brushing against the bow at her back. Ulías bows in return, looking faintly relieved, and turns back to the gates.

“Hurry, Tauriel,” the prince scolds, and as he darts carelessly up the path, she allows herself a small smile.

Legolas is young yet, an indulged elfling’s self-assurance warped into arrogance by the first taste of battle and a fervent wish to please his father. Tauriel is patient with him. In a hundred years or so, perhaps, his impetuousness will mellow into a pleasing confidence. His heart is true and strong, his nature sweet -- she has no fear for the elf he will become.

“Should we go to the clearing?” he asks, as she falls into step beside him.

“Up into the trees. The view is best there.”

The Feast of Starlight is Tauriel’s favourite festival, and this year the king’s star-charters have predicted a particularly bright, cloudless sky. The other elves are occupied with their feasting and merriment below -- the forest is silent tonight, and she means to take advantage of it.

“Here,” she says, and begins to climb the tall oak at the riverbend. Legolas follows her eagerly up into the boughs, ungraceful in his haste. She reaches the top first, parting the heavy leaves to peer up; she halts abruptly, Legolas bumping his head against her hip with a startled grunt.

She stares up at the glittering dark. Her heart leaps in her throat, and a quiet elation has stolen her breath.

“What is it?” Legolas asks, his wide eyes as blue as the light above her. “What do you see?”

She hears herself laugh, high and loud. Perhaps her voice might spiral up into the unbroken sky and fall back to earth in the ageless dust of the stars. “I see _forever_.”

 

***

 

It is easier to speak of love with ink and paper, for she can choose her words with care.

She sits by the shore of Valmar’s great lake and writes to Kíli of her longing and her sorrow and her strong will to find him once more. She tells him to wait and be patient -- no mean feat for him -- and keep his hope. She soothes him, and soothes herself with her own determination until her words run dry. Feeling foolish, like a twittering creature in the throes of first love, she presses a kiss to Kíli’s name like an oath.

She seals her letter and bears it to Thorin Oakenshield.

Thorin looks ill with grief, and Tauriel feels an answering pity. How different he is in his sorrow, his proud head lowered with the heaviness of despair. She does not love him as she loves Frodo, or even as she had grown to care for Bilbo, but familiarity has nurtured in her a certain vague warmth for Kíli’s dour uncle. She is sorry for him -- he has become like his harp, broken beyond all use.

He accepts her letter, and despite his insinuations to the contrary, she knows that he will see it given into Kíli’s hands if he is able.

 

***

 

The towering ebony walls of Mandos’s Keep loom before her, as tall and impenetrable as the wicked fortress of Isengard. Tauriel shifts uneasily in the snow, pulling her cloak tight against the chill of the wind.

She sees her mother’s face only dimly in her mind now, with a child’s eye. It distresses her that pieces of her mother are slipping from her grasp with each passing century -- she fears that soon there will be nothing left to remember.

With a sharp, practiced gaze, she studies the walls, looking for weaknesses in the smooth brick and ledges that might serve for climbing. Master Gandalf had said that no one gains passage to Mandos’s Halls and no one leaves them. But there are other ways . . . . For just a moment, her hand twitches toward the dagger at her belt.

What would her mother say if Tauriel came to her now, beaten and defeated?

She lets her hand fall back to her side. “Farewell, Ammë,” she says, and her voice is carried away on the wind. “Be at peace.”

There is no answer. Of course there is not.

She brushes the snow from her hair and turns away.

 

***

 

Kíli burns as hot as a furnace under her hands. She cups his grinning cheeks, strokes his mussed hair, digs her nails into the sturdy cords of his shoulders. Her breath is coming fast, her body loose and lax, yielding to the clumsy, sweetly eager press of his thick fingers inside her.

“What would you like?” he pants, breaking off with a throaty groan when she touches him in turn. “ _Amralimê_ , tell me.”

She pulls him up, pressing his face against her breasts demandingly.

He laughs, but he doesn’t laugh at her, and she kisses him fiercely.

No doubt they make a shameless picture in Lord Elrond’s lofty gardens, her tunic unlaced and Kíli half-tunneled beneath her skirts, but Tauriel feels only joy.

 

***

 

Frodo comes to see her on the morning of her departure. His look is solemn, and in his arms is a large parcel tied up in what looks like a tea-towel. He gives it to her without a word.

Tauriel opens the bundle to find an array of lembas and cheeses and dried meat. It is exactly the sort of gift one expects from a Baggins, but a swell of warmth fills her nonetheless. “Thank you.”

He bobs in acknowledgement and holds out his hands. She puts the bundle aside and takes them. His hands are so small, like the hands of an elfling, but the flesh is rough and his grip is strong and steady. “Safe journey, Tauriel. Say hello to everyone for me when you arrive.”

She embraces him with all the tenderness she can muster. “Thank you,” she says again as they draw apart.

He blinks owlishly. “Whatever for?”

How is she to find the words for her gratitude? How can she explain what it has meant to her, the kindness of this little soul, who reminded her that loving was not a weakness, and showing weakness was not a blasphemy? She surprises herself with the chuckle that rises in her throat. “For being a hobbit,” she tells him.

 

***

 

The silver ships dip and rise with the frothing grey waves of the Sea. Tauriel stands upon the dock, watching the ships fill with a steady trickle of passengers: elves young and old, great and small, with faces brightened by excitement and shadowed in gloom.

She grips her satchel and ensures that her bow is firmly at her back before walking down the stone steps to the dock.

Lord Celeborn himself stands at the water’s edge to oversee the boarding, offering brief words of reassurance to those of his people who seem most distressed. She catches the flicker of his dark eyes and is struck by the knowing depth of that gaze, so much like his wife’s.

Perhaps it is a quality of all beings who have lived to see the passing of an Age.

She finds herself before a ship, its white sails fluttering in the strong sea-wind and graceful silver bow arching over the waves. Her steps falter just before the boarding-plank, and she cannot help but look back. It is not as though she can see beyond the tall trees of Lothlôrien, but she thinks still of the forest far away, the winding caverns beneath the rock. She thinks of Legolas, forged by the great War into the elf she knew he would become. She thinks of Aratha, still training the kingsguards, her home empty and lonely once more. She thinks of Thranduil, the king she served so dutifully, who cast her away for her betrayal. She thinks of solitude and battle, the bitter taste of the death she has served lingering in her throat.

 _I have nothing left here_.

She crosses over the plank and steps down into the boat. She finds a seat next to an elfling who is sitting close to his mother, his hand tucked in hers and his eyes round and frightened. Tauriel turns her face away and watches the water bob against the shining hull.

When the meagre baggage has been loaded and the seats are full, a horn-call blows, and the ships glide forward, pulling slowly from their moorings. The low murmur of conversation in Tauriel’s boat ceases. On the dock Lord Celeborn lifts his hand in a wordless farewell blessing. From the balcony behind him, Tauriel sees the glint of golden-moonbeam hair, and her heart seizes in her chest.

A few elves weep to see the shores of Middle-earth shrink from their sight, but they are all of them made silent and solemn by the enormity of it. The wind blows fiercely as they drift into the quickening current, the blue of the sky bleeding into the water. As they pass the final port-dock, there is a flurry of motion as the boat’s occupants turn in their seats, that they might see one last glimpse of the shore.

The others may watch, transfixed, as their home vanishes behind them, but Tauriel will not. She draws up her hood against the chill of the morning mist and looks out across the blue-grey depths of the Sea.

 

***

 

She sits to rest on the banks of the Lady Nienna’s river, where the water has cooled the ground and softened the grass. Through a break in the heavy cover of the trees, she can see a full moon among a glittering swath of stars.

Tauriel lays back and closes her eyes, taking account of herself.

She is tired and hungry, Frodo’s parting gifts long since eaten. She has lost count of how many days she has travelled, and she would suspect herself of turning in circles but for the fact that the terrain is decidedly unfamiliar. She has nothing but her clothes and her weapons, a water-skin and a handful of flints. It ought to alarm her. But she is feeling strangely quiet, strangely calm tonight. She stretches out on the pliant earth and breathes. The moon shines with a placid, pale glow, steadier than the flickering of fire. A sudden whim takes her, and she speaks aloud.

“Do you watch me, my lady? I was told that you do.” Her voice echoes oddly into her ears, a burst of sound on a soundless night. “Your husband had mercy on my friends, and your sister soothed their sorrows.

“We of the Eldar do not know you but we cherish your gifts. I cannot help but think that a lady of light must be kind, to shine so brightly.” She reaches to her belt and pulls out her blade, laying it across her breast, a kingsguard giving her oath.

“Elbereth Gilthoniel,” she calls to the shining sky, “my lady of the light! You gave me the heart of a star, and I gave it into the hands of the one I love. If I do not find him here, I will wander forever in search of him. That is my vow.”

She clutches the pommel, its cool weight familiar as a lover’s touch. “Have pity on me, Lady of Light. Have pity on Eru’s Children.”

The night is still and silent, but to her eyes, the stars seem to gleam a little brighter.

 

***

 

Kíli’s last breath has left him in a spray of blood, and his body already grows stiff and waxen beneath her trembling hands. Her tears scald her cheeks. Once more she is useless, her sword forgotten, unable to do anything but weep.

 _If this is love, I do not want it_.

 

***

 

When she wakes in the morning, the sun blazing in her eyes, there is a hill across the river.

She is certain that there was no hill yesterday.

Calmly, she rises, sheathing her sword. She takes up her satchel and steps down the bank and into the river. It is as easy to ford as a stream, the water cool and sedate and lapping only to her waist even at its deepest point. Her breath grows uneven, her steps quickening as she bounds from the water into the tall grass. The hill stretches up in a gentle slope before her. She runs.

She stops at its crest, the sun hot at her back. In the valley below lies a citadel of white stone with dwarvish runes above its door.

 

***

 

For the second time in her life, Tauriel, daughter of Taulién, draws her bow on her king.

There is a sharp intake of breath, and Lord Thranduil’s implacable face shatters with anger and disbelief. Her own rage falters under the fierce stare of one whom she has defended and admired and faithfully served for five hundred years. Her bow falls, hewn in two by his blade, and she is left shaken, shamed, under the astonished eyes of her soldiers. She does not need to look at Aratha, white with fear beneath her helm, to know that she has thrown her life away.

But Lord Thranduil’s embittered heart is still capable of mercy. When everything but the battle has been lost, he offers her a word of comfort. He spares her life. But she has raised her hand against her sworn king, and banishment is the price.

Legolas pleads with her to take him with her, his youthful fancies doubtless imagining some daring exile from the poets’ romances. Aratha weeps, and talks of going with her, though they both know that she will not.

Tauriel goes, and she will not take their pity with her.

 

***

 

She has grown weary of fighting, but she will go to war once more for Kíli’s sake.

Tauriel raises her sword against the Halls of Aulë and issues her challenge until her throat is dry and hoarse. She strikes the stone with her bare hands and the heel of her boots. She batters the pommel against the door with all the foolish conviction of an untested soldier, for Kíli is behind those walls, and she will break them into rubble if she must.

She is Tauriel of the Greenwood, and she fears no Vala.  

 

***

 

The pendant gleams on Kíli’s breast, a white-blue glow flaring against his skin and threading through his pelt of dark hair. She props her chin against his shoulder and touches the smooth circle gently, colour dancing across her fingers.

Kíli’s arm tightens around her, and he trembles.

“What is it?” she whispers.

He huffs out a laugh. With deft fingers, he catches up the new braid over her shoulder, its red strands knotted in an intricate plait and held with a golden bead. “I don’t know,” he says, cheeks dimpled -- she touches one impulsively, smoothing over the pleasing rasp of his beard. “I’m happy you’re here.”

“I gave you my promise that I would come.”

“I never doubted that you would.” He kisses her throat and then laughs again, a note of wry sheepishness in his voice. “Perhaps I did, just a little bit. But I never doubted that you would try.” He squirms against the bed until they lie face-to-face, and he settles his brow against hers. “I love you.” He says it simply, without hesitation or ceremony, and his courage humbles her.

“As I love you.” If the words do not come as easily, still they come, and Kíli’s delighted grin is an ample reward. Tauriel lets her forehead drift back against his. His warm hand finds her back, stroking tenderly. She closes her eyes, counting their matched breaths, and she smiles.

Tomorrow there will be much to do, many dwarves to appease, many more battles to fight. But tonight Kíli is at her side, his face bathed in starlight.

 

***

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I couldn’t resist. Elves are so gosh-darn melodramatic.
> 
> (And I seem to be having a hard time letting go of this series. I was thinking I might do a little collection of shorts next. Does anyone have any particular requests for what they might like to see in this ‘verse?)


End file.
